A Peekaboo Bonnet (or two) for Owlet

When browsing on Pinterest awhile back I came across this amazingly cute bonnet and knew I HAD to make one for Owlet! I found the original tutorial for it from Made by Rae's Peekaboo Bonnet Sewing Pattern. The pattern is really well done, it has multiple sizes and just made a lot of sense. I was a little intimidated by the piping since I've never done piping before but I was motivated by the amazingly cute bonnet I had seen!

So I got to work. I made three bonnets to start with. This first one was for a friend's baby...

and it's reversible!

And there was also one for Owlet of course...

Doesn't it look even cuter on her!

And because a girl can never have too many hats, and because T-rex was insistent that we needed to buy the blue fabric with the birds and flowers... I made another one.

And of course Owlet made a funny face to go with it, haha! I love that tongue, always sticking out!

Gizmo and Owlet...BFF

Sorry for the LONG blog hiatus, I've had technical difficulties which have been fixed by my new best friend...

Meet Mac!

But this blog post isn't really about my new best friend forever, partly because my shiny new friend will probably only last 4-5 years like all our other computers :)

Nope, it's about this little girl...

and the smaller of her big brothers.

Aren't they so cute together! Gizmo shares his precious blankie with Owlet and wants to hold her now. I'm a little jealous, he won't even share his blankie with me!

And I'm breaking my no-naked-pictures-of-kids-on-the-internet rule here because it's the only pic I have of them in the bath, and Gizmo is covered after all. Now that Owlet is bigger they take baths together and T-rex is learning how to shower like a big kid. He still sometimes showers with Gizmo but more often I have the two little ones in the bathtub together to play. They both love it. Gizmo helps "scrub scrub" Owlet.

This last one is from a few weeks ago but aren't they adorable! Owlet is now joining us at dinnertime in her highchair with her book. When I broke out the camera to take a picture Gizmo said he wanted in too and when I said "okay" he promptly started holding Owlet's hand for the picture. He's such a sweetie!

I'll be on here more frequently now that I have a new BFF (sorry Ashley!) with some new posts on what we've been up to this spring. We've got a PACKED summer planned too so be prepared for lots of updates on that fun too!

March Update

I think next year I'll give up blogging for Lent, because in past history I tend to drop off the face of the Earth during Lent anyway and suddenly stop blogging for a few weeks. What can I say, that's life as a pastor's wife. Life has been good but busy! And exhausting...very exhausting. So here's a quick update on us with zero pictures because my computer sucks. I will be fixing that problem and photo bombing with our latest happenings soon. In the meantime just assume the kids still look cute, I still look tired, and my husband still wears black almost every day.

In the Hayes household we have truly lived out Lent:

-I potty trained Gizmo, which went shockingly well until...
-4 of us caught the plague (ie a vicious stomach bug that makes one feel like they're dying)
-the TWO YEAR OLD caught the plague...so we cleaned up vomit 20+ times and diarrhea innumerable times, words cannot express the horror
-I successfully abstained from meat every Friday this Lent for the first time since college!! (Note: I was a vegetarian in college, rofl!)
-we went to church...a lot
-my husband came home a few times in between church obligations, I'm surprised we still recognize each other
-I ditched the winter decor for spring decor in a feeble attempt to force the weather to turn more spring-like. It failed.
-it snowed...a lot...like nearly every day
-we reorganized our living room to accommodate school supplies
-I discovered a peasant dress pattern and make Owlet several adorable and superfluous outfits
-I abandoned a quilt for the guest room after a measuring snafoo or five. I'll try again when my pride has recovered
-we celebrated Easter and my husband started his vacation, hooray! We're celebrating by doing house projects, lounging around, and tomorrow we will go hiking since it seems spring will finally arrive. Thank God!

A Family of Five

 

For my friends who keep pestering me for an updated picture of the kids :)

A Tree Wall Mural for the Nursery

This tree has been in the plans for Owlet's nursery from the start but for some reason I just could not nail down the design or colors for it so my husband could start it! We went back and forth on whether to do a white silhouette tree, a dark grey, a dark brown, etc. In the end this combination of a Grey/Beige (or "Greige") trunk and dark green leaves worked perfectly we think. The green was color-matched to the green fabric from Owlet's wall quilt. The design is based off of a small metal tree hanging off a Target candle I got on sale a month ago. I was sitting at the table staring at it one day and it occurred to me that it was the perfect tree for Owlet's room! Kyle tweaked the design just a bit to fit the space better and he did it so seamlessly you'd never know what wasn't part of the original design.

First he sketched out the tree in pencil. Then he painted the trunk and branches...

 (In progress)

 Next he painted the leaves green. He says it was a bit nerve-wracking to paint them on the ceiling. I was watching and just kept feeling like we were doing something not allowed, I mean we put dark green paint ON THE CEILING!! No going back from that, folks! Never something we could have done in a rental, and oh it felt so good to have the freedom to do it especially because I love the effect it gave!

  (First coat done)

 

(Final product...with a baby this time)

Belated Valentine's Day

My computer seems to be giving me some internet trouble lately so I haven't been able to get my planned posts up, ugh!

But I managed to coax it into uploading some pictures for me. So here's my belated Valentine's day post :)

The day before Valentine's Day started out super warm, like this....

 But on that same day the same spot looked like this...

So yeah, it was a cold Valentine's Day! Luckily it was plenty warm and cozy inside. Valentine's Day is my excuse to pull out bright colors in the middle of February when the winter is kinda dragging on. On the ledge above the sink I put out a spring-ish candy bowl with our leftover candy canes. T-rex says the mint ones burn his mouth so those are always left until last. I figured they're red, that's Valentine's day-ish, right?  I also got these cute $1 mailboxes to hide Valentine's treats for the kids and behind those are their little gifts and cards from Grandma and Grandpa.

 The lower ledge near the dining room table has become our place to store greeting cards. It makes it nice and festive and fun.

In other news Gizmo is learning his letters and Owlet is learning to grasp toys (see evidence below)

Just before Valentine's Day I got some sewing done. I saw this insulated casserole carrier on Pinterest awhile ago and pinned it knowing I had to make it for Kyle's mom. The boys helped me pick out a nice purple fabric for it (purple is her favorite color) and I got to sewing. It actually wasn't as complicated as the instructions looked at first, the instructions are just super detailed, which is nice :) I got the casserole carrier instructions at 2 Little Hooligans.

I apologize for the picture quality, I finished this late at night (what else is new!) and had to take a picture then with no natural light around because it was being boxed up and shipped first thing in the morning.

Baby Sleep Log Follow-Up

 I figured I should do a follow-up of how my Baby Sleep Log is working for me. The one I'm using with Owlet is almost identical to the one I used with Gizmo. However, we're not dealing with severe colic, medication schedules, etc this time so I actually have the time to muse on how it's working with her. The log worked well with Gizmo too and was essential for writing down his medication dosing especially if my husband and I were trading off baby duty, as we did a lot during those days because Gizmo was so high maintenance.

As a reminder, here's what it looks like on the outside, all prettied up in turquoise, which seems to have become Owlet's signature color. You can print out your own here.

And here's the inside. Notice I have the cycles numbered, that is mostly so I can quickly and easily count how many feedings and/or naps Owlet has had in a day. I also have a line for Planned and a line for Actual. I came up with that idea when Gizmo was a baby because his Planned schedule and Actual schedule were often quite different but I still wanted to keep the plan in mind.

How this works right now is I jot down the time I started nursing Owlet under Feed. For now I ignore "Play" because I am confident Owlet's feeds are consistent and she's eating plenty. If I was concerned I'd jot down the time she ended her feed as "Play" so I knew how long she ate and how long she played. Occasionally I do write that down just for future reference for myself. She nurses 20 minutes total right now, both sides, except her last feed of the day when she sometimes just nurses 10 minutes on one side before falling asleep.  After she's been awake for a bit I change Owlet's diaper and lay her down in her crib. Then I jot down that time under "Sleep". So her sleep time is calculated from when I put her down, not when she actually fell asleep. This is why most Babywise moms have slightly shorter waketime averages than Baby Whisperer moms, because Baby Whisperer moms stand and shh/pat until their baby is asleep so they count the wind down time as waketime. It's totally fine to do it either way, this way just works well for me.

Under Notes I will jot down if the nap occurred anywhere outside the crib. For example if we were grocery shopping and she slept in the carseat. I also use those notes to document how well she fell asleep. This is useful to me when deciding whether it's time to lengthen or shorten her waketime. Normally she falls asleep in 5-15 minutes with no crying. I've let her cry-it-out maybe 4 times ever and the most she's done is cried off and on for 40 minutes or so. She's pretty chill. Once in a blue moon she'll not settle and I know she's overtired so I let her nap on me or in the swing. I see no benefit from letting an overtired baby cry it out because quite frankly it just doesn't work, they end up crying a lot and still don't settle.

At the bottom of the page I'll often note doctor's appointments, an unusual rash I want to keep an eye on, or just whether I think she's in a growth spurt or a fussy period or something. She's had 3 growth spurts so far, all lasting about 4-5 days and fairly low-key.

Owlet's current 9 week old Planned Schedule is very similar to T-rex's at this age and looks like this:

7:00am    Nurse
8:00-10:00am  Nap
10:00am   Nurse
11:00-1:00pm  Nap
1:00pm    Nurse
2:00-4:00pm   Nap
4:00pm   Nurse
5:00-6:30pm   Nap
6:30pm   Nurse
7:30pm   Nurse
8:00pm   Bedtime